As we send our children back to school for a new school year, it is time to renew our focus on how the Common Core standards are handcuffing our teachers, and allowing Washington D.C. bureaucrats to dictate our children’s futures. We deserve greater control over our classrooms.

I am proud to sponsor legislation alongside my Minority colleagues that puts a full stop to the Common Core. The legislation, called The Next Step, would then allow education professionals here in New York, from our communities, to craft our unique set of New York State Standards. This will be done without influence from those in our nation’s capital who have never set foot in East Aurora, and may have never stepped foot in a classroom to understand the needs of our children, or set-up a lesson plan.

Each day for the next nine months, we will deliver our children to teachers who live in our communities, who shop in our grocery stores, who we trust with our children’s future and are as much a part of their future success as we are. They’re trained professionals and they are some of the best in the state and in the country. We should empower them to educate our children to the best of their ability. No longer should federal bureaucrats have the power to undermine them, or step on their curriculum or educational innovation.

We elect our school board to oversee our local schools. They come door-to-door to get signatures to appear on the ballot. Their phone numbers appear on our district’s website. We have full access to their meeting times and meeting records. They’re accountable to us. Washington D.C. insiders are responsible to only themselves. We don’t have their phone numbers, email addresses, or their meeting minutes. By writing our own standards here on the state level, we encourage greater transparency in our schools.

Stopping Common Core is important for everyone in our education system. Our children would be taught to explore their intellectual curiosity as opposed to being taught to a test. Our teachers would have the opportunity to innovate, craft their own curriculum, and take full advantage of a craft they’ve worked so hard to master. Our school boards would get the opportunity to really work toward a bright future that we all know our children deserve. Finally, for us, the parents, we would get peace of mind that we are truly providing the type of educational environment in which our children can thrive and achieve the American Dream that each generation will do a little better and have more than we had.

I hope that you will join me, and the thousands of others calling for a full stop to Common Core. To discuss this or any other state issue, please call my hometown office at 716-655-0951 or drop by 411 Main Street here in East Aurora.